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Thursday, 2 March 2017

I decided to study this year...

This is a post that's been a long time in the coming. I've re-written it, lost the rewrites and then changed it even more.It's a personal post, not much about books, but I felt I needed to write it.

One of the things that has been on my mind a lot since the leadership course I did is my education. You should know that I was home educated and always have been. In the last two years my studies slowly stopped. I didn't graduate as I believe we should always be learning. And I certainly have learned since then. I've been informally studying writing and I've been reading books. But I've been a little lazy with it.

That is going to change. During this course I was encouraged to go study at university by both lecturers and fellow attendees. I was a little surprised and somewhat resistant. I had never seriously considered the university path. I plan to be a mother, not a career woman and my parents have taught me how to learn all I want to know. Besides, I don't know what to study. I'm interested in so many things.

But I promised I would give it serious thought. There were some good reasons given, counters to some of my objections. After much thought, research and prayer, I came to a decision. I should study. Since God has gifted me with a mind with the power of understanding some difficult and abstract concepts and well as the ability to remember random details that seem important (read: sound interesting to me at the time), I really ought to do something more with it. I shouldn't let it stagnate or get too caught up in the imaginary world of my own fancies. So I am going to study. But not at university.

Yes, not at university. I have reasons for this. I did write out a long list of arguments, but it seemed to strong and I wondering whether I really believed all of them myself. So I've made it shorter.

Firstly, studying at university isn't going to get me closer to having a publishable book. It would sideline my writing for a few years. Also I've heard that an English degree can be one of the worst things for a writer and especially an editor. If there was some kind of in depth Christian fiction writing course I might think differently.

Another factor is that I don't really like the university system and the way it's becoming the default for most young people. Also I don't want to be immersed in an ungodly environment in the way I would in a mainstream university. I want to reach out and help people, but asking the world to fill my mind with their ideas doesn't seem like a good idea. I'd either have to stay silent on some of my convictions, or get into trouble for speaking my mind.

Degrees aren't really worth as much as they used to be anyway. I was taught to teach myself and I'm
not worried too much about my lack of credentials. If I really had to go get myself a job I think there's smarter ways of getting one.

I'm not this crazy though.

I have a streak of non-conformity and wanderlust. Maybe I look normal, but I do write fantasy books and daydream a lot.v Anyway if I could afford university up front, I'd probably do missions work or travel or just help out at a lot of camps and conferences instead.

Lastly, I'm not so desperate to get married that I'd go to university just to meet people. This might not appear to be worth mentioning, but I was given that as one reason to do it so... we'll I'm not so it doesn't matter. Going other places for that purpose however...

Now you're probably all wondering how studying on my own works. Firstly, accountability. I'm sharing my goals here so that I can't be lazy about them. I'll be sharing parts of my work as well. The plan is to have it slightly separated from the rest of the website. I don't want to subject anyone to watching my education if they're not interested.

So here is what I'm going to be studying:

Biblical Greek. This is a vague idea I've had for just over a year. It's a couple of months since it became serious and a few weeks since I made a start. I bought the Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, Workbook, and Flashcards by William D. Mounce. I'll be going through the course on billmounce.com along with some material from NTGreek in Session. (The basic letters are fascinating, by the way)

I will be doing cultural studies. Basically I'll pick a country or people group, study them for a couple of months and write up something about my findings. I'm not sure what the time frame for that will be, but because I have several interruptions coming up in the next few months and this is going to take a little settling into, I'll give myself until the end of May to do my first study which will be on Myanmar/Burma.

Music appreciation. I'm not sure that I'll do this much, but I do like listening to most of the great composers and some modern compositions. That won't be stopping.

Theology, Philosophy, Apologetics and History. This will be through reading and occasionally writing up my thoughts. It will be wide branching, going into politics and biographies well as the aforementioned subjects.. Basically a lot of nonfiction of various sorts. I've been given a long list of books and some instruction on reading. Also my dad has a large collection of books. I'll be reading some of them. Current books are The Institutes of Biblical Law and The Insanity of God. (In the time I've been writing this, I listened to all of Mere Christianity.)

Conferences and Seminars. If there's an opportunity to listen to great speakers and interact with people of like minds, I'll take it.

Online Courses. I'm taking the Theme Mastery course by Kingdom Pen and something called User Experience for the Web on Open2Study. The Theme Mastery course has been amazing for the first ten lessons. The other not so much, but it can't hurt.

Other reading. I'll be reading a variety of fiction, both modern and classic, as literature and cultural study. It's not going be as big an intake as I've had in the past, but I hope to get more out of it.

And that's about it. Congratulations for making it to the bottom. It might look like a lot and I admit to feeling a little overwhelmed. But if I get my time under better control, it shouldn't take away from my writing and editing much. Especially since I've been a bit lazy about it lately.

I just want to add a special thank you to my fellow CHQ students. I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for you. It might not be the effect you expected, but you have been a great help to me. I may have learned a little Greek anyway, but I doubt I would have bought the books that I did. Thank you.

I absolutely love this post. Go you. This is something I intend to do myself either instead of, before, or after university. I too dislike how university has become the expectation. And so so expensive... Like yeah, I grew up learning how to teach myself, why would I pay a ton of money I don't have to go to some school to have professors antagonistic to Christians teach me what I could teach myself even better?

I love how you've obviously put thought and effort into planning this. Let's do this whole self-taught university thing, right? I love that there are others out there who think like I do. You could start a website/community just for these sort of people. It could be a thing. :)

Thanks Amanda. It could become a thing, except I actually do want to write and study, not run a website. :) I haven't even been able to get my own new website built.However I might make it a part of the Australian home-school network website my mother has idea for. But I like international communities, so we'll see.